Autumns at Fort Benning, Ga., can get chilly. A cold front hung over the military base in 2003, keeping an Airborne School class in long sleeves and sweats for a frigid hell tailored toward prospective paratroopers.

Weather warmed late in the three-week session, and students switched to T-shirts and shorts to fit the climate.

Chris Chandler fell in line that November morning as he always had, ready for another arduous day.

Something, he sensed, was off.

Prying eyes shifted down and to his left, locked on the prosthetic leg extended from his khaki shorts. The lightweight metal and carbon fiber caught everyone by surprise, unsettling even the instructors who had hounded him for days.

“They yelled at everybody else that day,” Chandler said. “They didn’t know what to do with me. They started questioning whether I could do the things I’d been doing the whole time.

“It was a paradigm shift for them because they hadn’t seen my new leg. In that instant, I was all of a sudden different.”

Not by military standards. Chandler had passed every physical and emotional test thrown at him — and there had been a lot — since losing his left leg in Afghanistan two years before. Chandler was cleared for active duty, without any asterisks by his name.

The glaring eyes didn’t affect him or his performance. He became the first amputee to graduate from jump school and deployed three more times in war-torn Iraq, fighting side-by-side with Marines who cared nothing about his supposed handicap.

“In that environment, you’re not special,” Chandler said. “A weak link in the chain could end up killing people. I was never that person, and I would never let myself be one. That’s just the way I’m built. That’s part of being a Marine.”

Still, the transition wasn’t always easy. Coming home rarely is.

Chandler found help through a sport that can be a challenge for even the most tough-minded individuals — let alone someone with his injuries.

And now he’s helping others do the same.

Under attack

After securing Afghanistan’s Kandahar airfield on Dec. 16, 2001, Chandler’s team was expected to escort an explosives ordinance disposal unit assigned to clear two remaining structures.

The path was supposedly clean. Chandler had no reason to fear the ground below, especially from the rear of the convoy.

That didn’t stop a step that should’ve been his last. It landed on a land mine, triggering an explosion that changed his life forever.

Chandler thought he was under attack. After all, the path was clear.

Dust and debris clouded his vision as Chandler called for a radio man and the reinforcements he could bring. No response. No clear line of sight to anyone in his battalion. He had to get moving.

“I kept trying to take a knee, assess the situation and see what was going on. I couldn’t take one,” Chandler said. “I couldn’t understand why. I was in shock, so nothing was sinking in. I finally looked down to see what happened, and thought both of my legs were gone. Gore was over my entire midsection, which is why I thought it was much worse than it really was.”

Shrapnel injured his right leg, but it wasn’t beyond repair. His left leg was.

Chandler used his belt as a tourniquet around his femoral artery below the knee, and waited for help to come. He doesn’t know how long it took to get rescued and taken to a medical evacuation site. Some say minutes. Others say hours. He was eventually transported to Germany and back to the United States with the explosion’s only major injury.

Chandler didn’t want that land mine to win. He didn’t want it to discharge him from the Marine Corps despite a lack of precedent for amputees to regain active duty status.

He didn’t waste time feeling sorry for himself. He listened to his recovery team. He did what he was told and never doubted his ability to rejoin the 1st Light Armored Reconnaissance Battalion. He did so in 2003, and redeployed again from ’05-06.

“You join the service to serve,” Chandler said. “That’s always the mentality that I had. A few sacrifice for many, and I chose to stand among the few. That mentality was built into me as a child and reinforced as a Marine.”

The program

Fast forward nearly a decade to a Balboa Park bench suddenly swarmed by an elementary school field trip. Chandler was again in shorts, with leg outstretched as the children stopped and stared. He acknowledged a few, without a hint of awkwardness.

“Everywhere, every day, in everything you do, you have to deal with it,” he said. “Whether I’m working out or playing with my daughter at the park, it always comes up. You don’t see a lot of amputees in the real world, even now. People just don’t know what to do with it.”

Chandler does. He wears it as a badge of honor, a symbol of newfound purpose. Chandler is still a Marine to the core, in personality and disposition. He’s also a father, a peer mentor to other amputees and a top-flight triathlete.

He found a way to tie those things together at the Balboa Naval Hospital, as an adviser and athletics coordinator for injured servicemen in this branch of the Wounded Warrior regiment. The contingent helps roughly 160 injured servicemen at a time return to physical and mental health. Sports are an integral part of the program’s recovery plan, easing the transition back to active duty or out of military service.

Chandler promotes athletics because it helped him cope after returning from Iraq. He became friends with then Balboa Naval Hospital head of prosthetics Peter Harsch, a veteran triathlete who turned him on to the sport.

Harsch designed Chandler’s distance-running and cycling-specific legs, and Nico Marcolongo of Operation Rebound — division of Challenged Athletes Foundation focused on veterans and first responders — helped him acquire some gear.

They gave him a trial by fire in a 2008 Oceanside triathlon. As Chandler describes it, he had a slow swim, exhausting bike ride and a painful run. The only important thing, he says, is that he finished.

He hasn’t stopped training since then. Chandler has steadily improved over the years and is now an elite para-triathlete. That was confirmed in 2011, when Chandler won the Long-Distance Triathlon World Championship.

Few amputees, or athletes in general, can compete with his drive to train or the results from it.

“He has the desire to compete and push his body to the limits,” Harsch said. “Triathlons are mentally and physically challenging, and he’s doing them with burdens that 99 percent of the country couldn’t imagine competing with.”

Competing in triathlons has become equal parts hobby, passion and proving ground. The sports keeps him active, healthy and focused on living life without limitation.

“It’s incredibly difficult, but crossing a finish line makes it all worthwhile,” Chandler said. “I’m being pushed to a new extreme, down a road I never expected to travel.”

Living that philosophy

Chandler’s is not a story of heroism. That’s what he’d like you to believe. He is but a player in a grand scheme, preaching a message much larger than himself. His life’s work is devoted to knocking down athletic and social barriers, while showing people like him that anything is possible. His methods are subtle, better suited to individual interaction. Chandler wants to be a role model, but tells his story publicly only so it can inspire those out of reach. He’d much rather stay quiet, lead by example and encourage others to pay it forward.

“These challenged athletes should not be treated as separate but equal,” Marcolongo said. “Everybody should stay together and work together. It’s the same field of play with a unique set of circumstances. There is nothing these people can’t do, and they shouldn’t be put in a separate box. They shouldn’t be reclassified.

“Chris is a great example of that. He believes in that and he lives that philosophy every day.”